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Aside From That, Mr. Scalzi, How Was the Rest of Worldcon?

Seanan McGuire about to dispense Hugo justice on my skull, while Kate Baker looks on. From Tor.com’s album of pictures. Click the photo to go to it.

It was pretty good, I have to say. I’m going to admit that for various reasons I didn’t walk into Worldcon this year in the best of moods, so LoneStarCon had a high hill to climb in order to get me in a happy space. Obviously being handed a Best Novel Hugo will do wonders to your disposition, but even before then my spiky angles were largely sanded down.

Part of that was strategic planning on my part — we got to the convention on Friday evening so I wouldn’t feel all dragged out by Monday, and I kept my programming to a minimum (I think I told the program folks that I didn’t want to be on panels because the mood I was in, I might stab someone). But the other part of that was simply being around people I like in largely relaxing circumstances. Funny how friends will make you feel good about life. I spent a lot of time in the bar or at a table at the convention itself, surrounded by conversation and the occasional hijinx, like estimating the weight of a polyploidal cinnamon roll and then having members of our group take the roll to the UPS store to get it weighed. You know, as you do. Good times.

One funny thing about Worldcon for me is, if I’m nominated for a Hugo, I usually have a night where I can’t get to sleep, because my brain will keep me up, turning over possible victory scenarios in my head. This often coincides with the night before the Hugo ceremony, which is pretty awful. This time it happened on Friday night, when I was already cranky by having a delayed flight; the Hugo calculus plus other factors meant I ended up getting three hours of sleep. This meant, however, that I was out like a light on Saturday night, so I was fresh as a daisy Hugo night. So, uh, yay, I suppose.

I did do three events, all on Sunday afternoon: A signing, which went over time by a half hour (this is not a bad thing, as long as you’re not taking up someone else’s signing space), a reading, at which I read an excerpt from the upcoming novel, and then a kaffeeklatsch. All of these went pretty well, excepting the part at my reading where I berated someone for not turning off their cell phone and then having my own go off. Yeah, that was embarrassing.

Sunday night I already discussed in the previous entry, and on Monday morning I walked my Hugo over to the convention center and let anyone who wanted to get close to it, pick it up and take pictures of it. Because, hey, they’re the reason I had it at all; figured they might want to see it up close before I took it home.

So in the end LoneStarCon did indeed get me into a happy place — and, importantly, almost certainly would have managed it even if it hadn’t have given me a Hugo. That’s a good con. Thanks, folks.

16 thoughts on “Aside From That, Mr. Scalzi, How Was the Rest of Worldcon?”

Caption: All that is required for Hugo Justice to triumph is for amused bystanders to do nothing.

Other news: Congrats! It’s always kismet when good company dispels the funk of life.
Of course you obviously won because you went with the tie-clip (and are those cuff-links I detect?). I consider this an entirely fair state of affairs.

Yes, we were able to tell. No, I’m not allowed to say anything else; Scalzi knows (vaguely) where I live and (precisely) where I work, and I don’t want him showing up at either place with a Hugo in prime braining position.

I didn’t realize that the Hugo award was so… phallic looking. Obviously by the way you are holding it in your lap with your two hands that you’ve made some comment to that effect and are about to get some of Mr. Hugo’s compensory justice from one who is offended.

I had a cell phone go off once while I was teaching a class, and just kept right on talking, ignoring it, wondering why the idiot hadn’t turned the phone off, or, lacking that, wasn’t frantically hitting “reject call.”

Yeah, because the idiot was teaching the class. Ooops.

But on the main topic…still, much congrats on the award. Whatever complicated calculus drove the voting, it was well-deserved.

@Dave 9:53 pm
That award isn’t a thing that looks like a penis.
[redacted]
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Oh, my I shouldn’t say this either, so:
[redacted]
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I mean, dude, I’m a human male and I have the usual two penises that we all have, but human females have sledgehammers and sharp axe type things so I always hide my second one.
Because? Like, OUCH!.

All of these went pretty well, excepting the part at my reading where I berated someone for not turning off their cell phone and then having my own go off. Yeah, that was embarrassing.

I’ve decided that it is a natural law that anytime you correct someone, you are likely to make the same (or similar) error yourself and that the bigger stink you make, the likelier it is to happen. This is most notable on posts where a self-proclaimed English usage cop is taking someone to task for mistaking “lie” for “lay”; they inevitably use “it’s” where they meant to write “its”.

Nevertheless, congratulations on the richly deserved Hugo and thank you for your time at the con. Without writers like you, there would be no need for fandom.

John, the whole gamma rabbit thing bothers me on a deep level, but then your title plays off what is probably the ultimate of all politically incorrect, insensitive jokes ever told. This gives me hope for you! >;-)

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